Wordlessness—Part 2

Another way we can experience wordlessness is to have a moving experience happen to us. If we come face to face with a snake, for example, for a split-second we are utterly beyond words. Even for less dramatic situations—seeing a beautiful bird, having the sun suddenly burst through clouds, hearing a gorgeous piece of music—we may find ourselves completely absorbed and in a wordless state. These events usually are beyond our control. They are visited upon us. Some of them are moments of grace, when we are touched by a power greater than ourselves.

But we can also cultivate wordless states. Meditation or moments of intense contemplation are times when we open ourselves to the present moment and become fully engaged with life as it unfolds—right now. This is the essence of the practice and discipline of meditation: to become so absorbed into the moment that we have no words to mediate or distort the experience. We’re not doing, we’re being. When we are able to get to this place, we are removing a major barrier between our outer self (persona) and our deeper self. Our persona is something we’ve acquired, that is mostly a phony structure of words and names. It’s a masquerade that we engage in. If we can place ourselves in a wordless state, however, we can burrow behind the mask to the real person hidden there.

We’d obviously be lost without words. They’ve become essential to our social interactions and how we interpret the world. They’re a part of us. They’re the essence of what it is to be human. But how we react and think is often controlled by words—words that are in our heads and words that other people tell us.

So words can also be pests. As Charlie Brooker (an English satirical commentator) put it: “Words are like cockroaches—only once the lights are off do they feel free to scuttle around on the kitchen floor.”